We love novels that span multiple generations, as they allow the author to use history to build a strong emotional narrative. The Manor of Dreams follows two Chinese American families who come from different classes, yet intertwined in ways they are not aware.

The cast of characters is mainly Chinese women and girls, while the male characters are all of Western descent. Is this intentional?  

I was intentional about the characters I wrote, and one of the things I wanted to examine in this book was the intersection of the experience of being both Chinese and female, and the marginalizations that come with both identities. That being said, I was also cognizant to include nuanced dynamics and relationships with Chinese men as well (in particular Vivian’s dynamics with her father and with her uncle).

The story touched upon the Chinese railway workers who built the American railways. When did you first come across this piece of history?

In my last year of uni at Stanford I took an Asian American Art History class. The professor began one of the lectures by saying “There is a saying that the roofs of the university are stained red by the blood of the exploited Chinese railroad workers”. That statement stuck with me, and as I did more research I discovered the hidden history of the Chinese immigrant railroad workers who built the railways that ushered the United States into this period of economic prosperity and built the wealth of my alma mater’s founder – but at a steep price. The workers were put in dangerous and life-threatening conditions that involved blasting dynamite through mountains, paid very little compared to their white counterparts, and when they tried to form unions, their wages and food was withheld. I knew immediately that this was something I wanted to write about – the price and consequence of American prosperity often being built on exploited immigrant labor.

And why do you think The Manor of Dreams is the right place to explore this story?

I wanted to explore this idea of an institution, or a virtuous setting, having a conflicted history, and I wanted to bring the lens of history into the story. But I wanted to add my own twist to it. The Manor of Dreams was a fictional story in which, through a confined, family-centered locked room mystery setting, I could explore these themes and histories up close, with a Chinese American family personally confronting the history of the railroad workers – and the prospect that their beautiful family home might be imbued with this haunted history.

Chinese women have historically been thought of as spies, prostitutes, etc, and are often portrayed as so in the media. Do you think this has improved recently?

One of the great persistent issues in Chinese representation in Hollywood was that actresses were constantly typecast into harmful stereotypical roles (such as the spy, or the prostitute, often with very few speaking lines). Though Hollywood still has a long way to go, it is heartening to witness leaps and bounds in representation in the previous decades, with a wider variety of nuanced roles and storylines for Chinese actresses.

Speaking of cultural representations, there were many stories and poems mentioned, such as the classic The Dream of the Red Chamber. How did you pick which ones to feature?

The epigraph of the book borrows a poem from The Dream of the Red Chamber series, which is also in many ways a story about the rise and fall of prosperous families, and an analysis of what is truth vs. illusion, all themes that I examined in Manor as well. There are other poems featured in Manor – Emily Dickens’s “My River Runs to Thee” and Yeats’s poem “The Folly of Being Comforted” are personal favorites of mine that I thought were significant to the plot as well when they were accompanying one of the love stories.

And finally, can you tell us one thing that you came across while researching for the Manor of Dreams that you would love to include in the book but couldn’t.

I did a great deal of research into the architecture of Gilded Age homes that I wanted to include in Manor, but didn’t have the space to as I wanted to focus on one fictional family. But there are such fascinating family and architectural histories of those who really amassed a great deal of wealth in the 19^th century, and it was interesting to follow the history of those lavish homes and the families themselves.

The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li is published in hardback at £22 by Renegade Books on 8 May 2025.